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Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) frequently publishes updates, press releases, and other forms of communication about its work in more than 60 countries around the world. See the list below for the most recent updates or search by location, topic, or year.

In October, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Kunduz trauma center in Afghanistan was targeted by US airstrikes, which resulted in the deaths of 14 staff, 24 patients and four patient caretakers. Over one million people in northeastern Afghanistan remain deprived of high-quality surgical care as a result.

Our thoughts go out to the friends and families of those who died. We also remember our colleagues who tragically lost their lives this year in a helicopter crash in Nepal and our colleague who was killed in the Central African Republic (CAR). We take this opportunity as well to tell Philippe, Richard and Romy, our staff who are still missing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), that they are not forgotten.

In August 2013, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) pulled out of Somalia after working in the country continuously for 22 years.

The last year has been one of exceptional circumstances, decisions, and compromises, particularly with regards to Somalia and Syria. We have again seen profiteering from humanitarian organizations, in the form of robberies and the looting of medical structures, but the most striking thing we have witnessed is the failure of the global humanitarian aid system in countries such as Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan.

At the end of 2012 our colleagues Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut were still being held hostage after their abduction from a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya on 13 October 2011. This is one of the longest-running kidnappings in the history of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

2011 was a year of multiple, complex, humanitarian emergencies, and almost all challenged our capacity to respond.

Protracted war, drought and restricted access to medical assistance or relief all contributed to a worsening of the crisis across south-central Somalia. From May to December, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated more than 95,000 people for malnutrition and over 6,000 for measles in south-central Somalia and in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. We vaccinated almost 235,000 children against measles and held more than 450,000 consultations.

In October, a cholera epidemic took on overwhelming proportions. In less than three months, MSF treated more than 91,000 patients for the disease, around 60 per cent of all registered cases (see pages 84 – 85). The operating budget for MSF in Haiti in 2010 came to almost 106.1 million euros. One year after the earthquake, however, significant needs were still not being met.

For Médecins Sans Frontières, an organization that has specialized in responding to emergencies as well as working in fragile and unpredictable contexts, no two years are the same. There is of course the ongoing work carried out by our thousands of staff around the world, who provide healthcare where it’s lacking and deal with diseases that continue to take a high toll on populations. But over and beyond the more constant medical activity, each year brings new challenges to our organization.

2008 was a year of achievement as well as frustration for MSF. While advances in malnutrition treatment allowed more children to be helped, teams trying to reach victims of some of the most acute conflicts in the world faced considerable obstacles.

Throughout the year, MSF aid workers carried out 8.8 million consultations and 47,500 surgical interventions in over 65 countries. They provided treatment for more than one million people with malaria, and nutritional care for more than 200,000 malnourished children.

If we were asked whom we treat the most often, we would reply: first young children, then young women. Amongst the displaced, refugees and populations caught up in fighting or whose health structures have collapsed, beside the directly wounded or those affected by specific epidemics, women and children occupy the majority of our consultations. This is the reason why we have to put a particular energy into improving the way we address some of the main pathologies responsible for the mortality and the morbidity of these two categories of population.